Language-Rich Spaces: Supporting Plurilingual Learners with Care, Clarity, and Research-Informed Practice

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Instructor: Tonya Gilchrist
Emergent plurilingual learners bring powerful assets to our learning spaces, but too often, they’re seen through a lens of limitation rather than possibility. This course invites educators to shift the narrative: to design spaces where language development, identity, and access to deep learning walk hand in hand. Together, we’ll explore how to support English language development without diluting curriculum, how to build oral language and literacy without deficit thinking, and how to create environments that feel culturally responsive, cognitively rich, and emotionally safe for every learner. If you believe plurilingual learners deserve more than pull-outs and low expectations, and if you want to support English development without losing richness, identity, or access, this course is for you.

Course information

For teachers
Duration: 12 hours
4 sessions
Live peer-to-peer learning

The methodology

Teachers will learn in small groups of 2-5 colleagues, meeting once a week for 4 weeks. Sessions are 1.5 hours and can be in-person or online.

Course syllabus

Session 1: More Than Just English: Centering Identity and Belonging

  • • Unpack the connection between language, culture, and belonging in diverse learning spaces
  • • Challenge deficit-based narratives around “language gaps” and “catching up”
  • • Explore tangible ways to affirm and integrate students’ home languages, even when you don’t speak them yourself

Session 2: Input Matters: Building Oral Language and Vocabulary Without Watering Down

  • • Use storytelling, visuals, gestures, shared experiences, and classroom routines to foster language naturally
  • • Design cognitively engaging tasks that support comprehension and academic vocabulary
  • • Learn why comprehensible input + high expectations = growth

Session 3: From Speaking to Writing: Supporting Language Development Across the Day

  • • Use sentence stems, collaborative talk, shared writing, and modeled thinking to build expressive confidence
  • • Scaffold speaking, listening, reading, and writing through authentic classroom practice—not isolated language drills
  • • Understand and apply translanguaging as a powerful tool for meaning-making and identity affirmation

Session 4: Sustaining Language-Rich Spaces: Small Moves, Big Shifts

  • • Identify simple, high-impact routines that embed English support across the curriculum
  • • Strengthen collaboration between classroom teachers and EAL/language support specialists
  • • Reflect on your own practices and set intentions for cultivating a space where plurilingualism is the norm—not the exception

Instructor

Tonya Gilchrist's profile photo

Tonya Gilchrist

Tonya is a renowned international education consultant and learning strategist with a mission to help schools hold tightly to less, so students can learn more. From supporting schools with inquiry, self-regulation, literacy, mathematics, Universal Design for Learning, and more, Tonya specializes in designing tailored professional learning that’s equal parts research-informed and relationship-driven.

How it works

You will join a group of 2 to 5 colleagues, and as a group, you will meet 4 times, either in person or online, at a time you all agree on.

1

Join a circle

Organize your study group with colleagues. You'll have 3 days to "match," from January 2 to January 5.

2

Agree on a schedule

Decide the most convenient time for your sessions, online or in person.

3

Join and collaborate

When the session arrives, connect with your colleagues and complete the activities together.

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